By Nick Place
Since the Wii Sports pack-in introduced gamers to the its motion-sensing controls, the possible applications of the remote in sports titles became obvious. While EA Sports’ modification of Madden NFL 07 to use the Wii remote and nunchuk, golf seems to be made for the Wii’s controller. Enter Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, a game that at first seems like a major departure from earlier entries, but after some time feels all too familiar.
The game features the usual excellent smattering of game modes, including a robust PGA tour one. In this career mode, the player garners money, sponsorship, and experience points and assigns them to skills to improve their golfer with each passing tournament win – working their way up through the majors. It’s fairly standard for the series (which is to say, it’s entertaining) especially when you create your own golfer using the flexible character creator, made easier to use with the Wii remote.
But a well-developed career mode does no good without solid golfing and, in this case, the golfing hinges entirely on the controls. To hit the ball, the player holds the remote in a golf stance, holds down the B button, swings back and follows through. Controlling the power of a swing becomes intuitive after a while but taking care to avoid twisting the remote and inadvertently hooking or slicing the ball can be difficult. After the player has struck, he can add spin to the ball by tapping the desired direction on the directional pad and making an extremely awkward horizontal shaking motion.
There’s a sharp learning curve for any player, mostly because the remote is, like in many other Wii games, way too sensitive and the player must keep a death grip on the B button and let the swing be reset or the ball be struck early. When first starting, players should prepare for a lot of strokes that end up going just a couple feet. Once you become accustomed to the remote’s quirks, it gets easier but it’s certainly not as easy as swinging a golf club.
The swing mechanic works on a certain level but it basically just replaces the analog swing from previous console iterations of Tiger Woods with some arm motions. To control the direction of a shot or putt, the player still has to move the directional pad, instead of changing his or her stance. Also, the post-shot ball spin mechanic is annoying and incredibly awkward-try it once and you’ll understand why.
There’s an option to use the nunchuk’s C-stick to do a traditional analog swing, but it’s of dubious value on the Wii. In the end, the motion controls an entertaining new way to play Tiger Woods, but they’re jittery and ultimately shallow.
The game’s presentation falls short of EA Sports’ generally high standards. The sponsored gear that created characters can acquire is nice but those characters really won’t look all that nice no matter what they wear. Tiger Woods ’07 looks terrible any way you cut it. The golfers animate decently but they lack detail while the courses themselves are sparse and bland. The audio doesn’t stand out but isn’t lacking. The commentary occasionally becomes irritating when a player has to release the B button to reset a backswing gone awry and the announcers see fit to complain about the delay.
Control jitters and sub-par graphics aside, Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’07 is still fun. The progression in career mode is extremely satisfying, and the feeling of getting birdie on a tough hole is exhilarating. The controls are far from perfect though they’re still more fun than using a traditional controller. And with some fine-tuning, next year’s version could turn this par into a birdie.
